Happy Pets

The first night with your puppy could be a traumatic experience for both of you. You may decide that you wish your puppy to sleep in your bedroom. Fine, but I might warn you it’s not a very pleasant experience to be jumped on and bitten in the middle of a peaceful sleep, apart from the fact that your bedroom carpet will not benefit from puppy’s puddles. The more acceptable place for a young puppy is in the kitchen. Your bedtime must now become a well thought out, planned affair. For at least half an hour before you wish to retire, play with your puppy. This will, hopefully, tire him out—at least for an hour or so. His supper eaten, you must visit the garden with him and ensure he’s a ‘busy dog‘. (more…)

The biggest problem most dog owners have is getting their dogs to return to them on command once the dog is off the lead. But so many owners cause their own problems on this exercise, I’m not surprised their dogs don’t wish to return to them. Let us first view the faults, in the hope of preventing you from making the same mistakes.

Why your dog won’t come back to you

The first and simplest reason your dog will not return to you on command is that you haven’t trained him thoroughly in the garden. If he won’t come when called in the confined space of his own home, he certainly won’t in the freedom of the fields. In the main, owners with untrained dogs are full of excuses. (more…)

Mocha, on the other hand, feigns stupidity, which is not very difficult for her. She’s the nearest thing I’ve ever met to a backward Labrador. She has the sweetest disposition and a tail that never stops wagging. But there was a time in her training when I began to believe she was deaf. No matter how I encouraged or commanded, she would sit totally ignoring me, and yet the slightest sound of a food bowl being placed on the floor would bring her at top speed. I simply proved to Mocha that whatever I told her to do she must and no amount of feigning stupidity would get her out of it. (more…)

Heidi was never very fond of the other five dogs and she positively hated any strange dog that approached her and would scream at them with dislike and threaten them with blue murder if they so much as sniffed a hair on her body. At the tender age of nine months, she towered above all our dogs and regarded everything in and around the home as her sole possession to be guarded and I could feel aggression growing in her towards the other dogs. I could not face the prospect of constantly separating one dog from the next in case of fights. Our five dogs had always lived in peace until Heidi came. I discussed this problem with Don, who, like myself, was a little reluctant to face the truth of the matter that Heidi did not fit. She was our dog and our responsibility. A dog is not just for a few months but should be for life and that’s what Don and I told each other frequently. But, as sure as I know there will be a tomorrow, I knew Heidi would strike. Her first victim was Buttons. (more…)

The chaser

My heart aches when an owner comes to me with a chasing dog. ‘I daren’t let him off,’ they tell me. ‘He chases bikes, postmen, cars, children, other dogs.’ Again, we have a situation where the poor dog suffers because the owner cannot be bothered to train against these things. I have heard so many remedies for the dog chaser which, in my opinion, would only make him worse. Many of these so-called remedies take the control of the dog out of the owner’s hands and put the onus on the thing that’s being chased. A good example of this is the dog who chases bikes. Two of the most frequently-used remedies are that the rider of the bike carries a jug or cup of water which he throws at the dog on his approach, or the rider of the bike offers the dog a titbit. (more…)